Companies in product development industries, such as the automotive industry, the construction equipment industry, the consumer electronics industry, the defense systems industry, and the software industry produce complex systems. These systems usually have many components that each perform a simple task in the overall operation of the system. For example, a vehicle or machine may have a transmission system, an exhaust system, a suspension system, a steering system, and other components that cooperate in the functioning of the vehicle or machine. While each of these components may perform its own task, they may, in some way, interact with or affect the operation of the other components.
It is useful to keep track of these interactions in some situations. For example, in some industries, each component might be designed by a different team. To ensure the design process goes smoothly, however, one design team should be able to determine when a design change to its component may have some impact on a component designed by another team due to a particular interaction between the two components. Keeping track of these interactions allows the design teams, though separate, to design the system in concert. In addition, keeping track of these interactions enables failure mode and effects analyses (FMEA) to be carried out.
Some tools have been developed to keep track of interactions in a system. One is described in U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2005/0138477 by Liddy et al., published on Jun. 23, 2005 (the '477 publication). The '477 publication describes a system for FMEA. The system creates an interface matrix diagram based on a boundary diagram listing component interactions input by a user. The user adds to the interface matrix diagram by inputting numerical strengths of the interactions. The system then creates a parameter diagram based on the interface matrix diagram, to which the user enters textual descriptions of noise factors, inputs, control factors, and outputs to indicate influences of potential failures for the system. The system then generates a FMEA form based on the parameter diagram.
While the system of the '447 publication allows the user to capture some details of interactions between system components, it may be inadequate. For example, no descriptions or functions of the interactions can be captured. Further, there is no way to ensure the information entered by the user follows any particular convention. Therefore, the convention used to create the boundary diagram, the interface matrix, and the parameter diagram may vary across systems and users. Accordingly, FMEA forms generated by the system may be inconsistent and confusing.
The present disclosure is directed to overcoming one or more of the problems set forth above.